


The Ivory Spire

by NeverGoodbye



Series: Shadowfury [2]
Category: World of Warcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-31
Updated: 2010-05-31
Packaged: 2017-10-09 19:59:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/90999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverGoodbye/pseuds/NeverGoodbye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Less meta, more angst. Nephthys reminisces about BC endgame.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ivory Spire

**Author's Note:**

> With love to my WUoS guildees.

 

It hadn't always been like this, Nephthys mused. She hadn't always been treated like a second bank. Once, not so very long ago, she was out in the wilderness, like everyone else, at the cutting edge of the new and the exciting. She had been an important person in her guild - dungeon leader and commander of their forces against the elite bosses of Karazhan. And with that thought she cringed.

_Karazhan had been the best and the worst of times for her. How she pored over literature about the Ivory Spire! She had conferred with her colleagues and drew up strategies for their assaults. She chattered over plans with the guild officers and reveled in her leadership. She was full of pride in her guild and hopeful for their future successes until…_

_They couldn't get Attuman down. Or, sometimes they could, but then they couldn't down Moroes. Or the Maiden of Virtue…. And she couldn't understand why. She walked through Shattrath City and saw the gear that so many others proudly displayed and she felt the red hot flash of embarrassment crawl across her cheeks. She shouldn't be angry, she knew, but she was. And she was jealous._

_Nephthys had a bad temper about her in those days, and when she got angry, things tended to die. She got too easily frustrated, blaming her friends for their collective failure, and worse, blaming herself because she had failed them. She pushed herself to be the best she could be, convinced that she alone was the one to lead them to victory; the ever elusive prize resting solely on her shoulders. She spent gold freely for supplies, tailoring the best and brightest robes and garments for herself that she could. She bought expensive items from the Auction House to supplement her spells. She did all the quests, all the dungeons, all the preparation she could think of to get ready for Next Week's Run._

_But they still failed._

_And after awhile, Nephthys started to feel her resolve draining away. She became so like a ghost in her own shell, which considering she was already undead was not a far stretch of the imagination. She continued going through the motions but her passion was lost. And after another while, she stopped going entirely. She retired to the catacombs of the Undercity and slept; away from the guild, away from her failures, away from the frustration that had replaced her joy in the world._

_For a long time, she slept._

_If it wasn't for Deathstro, she might have slept forever. But in his waking, her death knight friend coaxed her from her own slumber. He awakened in her a renewed sense of the world around her. She ventured cautiously back into Azeroth once more._

_She found she was still a member of the guild, but her role was indelibly changed. Had she really expected that their life would grind to a halt without her? No, of course not, but it was a hard realization to come to nonetheless. Some of her friends remained, some had moved on. She felt an unforgiving regret fill her chest for those she never got to say goodbye to. Mostly, she kept to herself, unwilling to give her heart again so readily, to throw herself back into the turbid world that caused her to come undone once already._

Now here she was, walking through Shattrath once more. She was visiting the Scryers faction area for a shoulder enchant she had saved from long ago. Like the city around it, it was mostly desolate now, wholly unlike in those days when it had been the bustling epicenter of Azerothian life.

She had no desire to return immediately to her Under-prison so she wandered a bit in the forgotten city. She knew instinctively where every vendor and location was without having to resort to her map even once. She even chuckled softly when a goblin vendor offered her a quest she had never completed in the Nagrand valley. As she passed through the Terrace of Light, her eyes scanned the rows of glittering light-rimmed portals. She walked up to the one for the Isle of Quel'Danas. As she reached her hand forward, she let her fingertips graze the edges of its shimmering light. She couldn't help but let a half-smile creep up into the edges of her mouth.

_The Isle was the place to be in those days. If you weren't in Karazhan, you were on the Isle doing daily quests and racking in the dough. The first time she ported there she was an absolute mess. At first, the brightness of the sun and the buildings had almost blinded her. After the period of self-sequestering in the catacombs and the grey dreariness of the Undercity, this had been quite a shock. There were crowds of people everywhere and everyone seemed to be in a big hurry. Everyone except for her; she hardly even knew where to start. She felt the familiar flush of frustration rising in her when she noticed in the guild listings that someone else was on the Isle as well._

_She whispered the rogue and after a bit of coaxing, she agreed to help Nephthys find her way. Mdwu slipped out the shadows nearby and caught Nephthys by surprise. She was an undead like herself, but she was nicely geared in leather and had two impressively sinister daggers she wielded. There was an altogether impatient and exasperated look about her._

_"I don't do daily quests with other people," she said. Nephthys didn't think she had actually asked the rogue for that, but she let it pass without comment. She was thankful for the help, even if it came begrudgingly from a female rogue who acted like a grumpy old man._

_Mdwu was surprisingly helpful and thorough. In addition to showing her where the quest-givers were, she showed her the best route to take throughout the isle and how to complete each step of each quest. In less than an hour they had finished everything._

_"Thank you," Nephthys told her sincerely, then, "You're a great teacher."_

_Mdwu opened her mouth to object and then shut it with a click."I…. thanks." There was a pause, her mouth twisting into a bit of a frown. "Well. Don't let it get around. I have a reputation to uphold." But then she smiled just a bit. Nephthys smiled too._

_The following evening Nephthys whispered Mdwu again. She stubbornly refused to quest together, reminding Nephthys that that was something she simply did not do. Nephthys just as stubbornly told her that she would just do the quests next to her then. And if they weren't grouped up then it wasn't together, now was it?_

_But as they did their quests, Nephthys continued chatting with Mdwu. She didn't hide her outward annoyance but Nephthys wasn't dissuaded by it either. And eventually, she gave in. Night after night, the two would meet up on the Isle and do their quests together. It was a little thing, in the grand scheme, but Nephthys came to know and appreciate Mdwu in a way that few others in this land did. She felt grateful to the rogue for the companionship and the late night talks they shared; she kept Nephthys sane sometimes too, when everything around her was threatening to collapse._

_Her twin friends Karzik and Karzok kept asking Nephthys if she wanted to come along to their weekly Karazhan run. Nephthys shied away at first, old wounds still too present in her memory, but still… it made her wonder. What was it like... now? What if she could finally achieve what she had wanted to badly before?_

_When the time came, Nephthys found herself standing outside the dark forbidding gates of the Spire again. The call had been too great. Karzik winked at her and Karzok gave her a little squeeze of reassurance. It's not the same as it was before, he had assured her. Mdwu was there too and she gave Nephthys the faintest little smile. So were Nobull, Yahto and the other guild leaders. Nephthys did not offer any explanations for her absence or hesitation to come back, but neither did she feel any were demanded of her. Her guild accepted her without reserve and she took up her place in the back, content to follow with the group and obediently perform her role._

_What they had told her was true: her guild was destroying this place now and mopping the floor with their former enemies left and right. Nephthys looked around her in delight as she noticed the impressive quality of her guildmates' gear. The spells they used, the abilities they tried, the ease of which they encountered their previously immortal foes…this was all on a completely different tier of ability for them all. It was all so unlike the months ago when every scrap of victory had been brutally hard-won. It felt like a bittersweet triumph for her. And while, in reality, it was little more than the natural progression of things, their success felt more like a cruelty to the warlock than a reward. The evening had left her feeling all together numb._

Nephthys thought back on these things now. It had been around that time that Faeliya had come into her own – bright-eyed, fresh and new. A clean slate. An unwritten canvas. And still a powerful dealer of death. More than any of those things, she was NotNephthys.

The warlock sighed heavily. Her emotions about the past were more complicated than she liked to admit. On one hand, she loved the rich, full life she had experienced out there. But on the other she was resentful because she felt she was being cut off from her potential, that she had so much more to do. There was so much that lay outside these walls she was confined to day in and day out.

_Her guildmates placed the Wicked Witch's Hat on her head after an Opera event and they all laughed with her that it was an appropriate piece for all good warlocks to have in their gear. She wanted it, yes, but not like this…_  
(she felt torn, pulled in different directions)  
_All of this wanton loot, so easily gained now that they had all been granted new and better powers. It wasn't right, her mind screamed at her. It was too easy, too convenient, the powers that be that been all-together too hypocritical…_  
(so was she)  
_Because she didn't turn it away either. She didn't stop going. And when they downed the last boss, Prince Malchezaar, she accepted the Ruby Cape of the Mysticant that was offered to her. But she had still felt like a sham._  
(like she didn't know where she was supposed to be anymore)  
_Then Faeliya, their mage sweetheart, went along one week and was given the Curator's staff after they defeated him. His staff. That Nephthys had longed and ached for every night they set out in Karazhan and she had never won. It was too much. The indignity and the heartache and the jealousy were too much to bear…_

"Arrgh!" she growled, grimacing at the dredged up pain. She clasped her hands to her head, squinting her eyes and tried to drive away the pain with her will. When she opened her eyes again, she opened them wider than they'd been in a long time. "Dark Lady…." She murmured.

She blinked twice, slowly, not believing what she saw. She was no longer in Shattrath City; she was standing at the door of Karazhan itself. It was as if her daydreaming had been given a life of itself and now she was destined to relive everything of the past years again.

She took a hesitant step forward and placed her hand on the door. It was unlocked and creaked open at her touch. Her breath hitched slightly in her throat. The doorway – the entire entrance was exactly as she remembered. Except that it was quiet. She gingerly stepped in and looked around. It was entirely vacant, without even Berthold the doorman who usually waited to greet the eager adventurers. She peaked around the corner and there were no skeletal horses ot stable hands waiting to dole out death. Not even Calliard the watchman who patrolled the stable walks. It was her alone in the great stone hall. Or so she thought.

She turned abruptly upon hearing a noise coming from the steps. It was a quiet tapping sound, but it echoed throughout the empty entrance room. Nephthys stared in surprise as she saw a robed figure walking down the long arched stairwell wielding an impressive looking staff.

"Welcome," he said. "I've been expecting you."


End file.
